United Students Against Sweatshops

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United Students Against Sweatshops.
United Students Against Sweatshops.

United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) is a student organization based in the United States with chapters at over 200 colleges and universities. In April of 2000 USAS helped to found the Worker Rights Consortium, an independent fair labor monitoring organization which exacts an annual membership fee from participating universities. The WRC works with NGOs and human rights groups in countries where collegiate apparel is produced. At present over 150 universities and colleges have signed on to join the WRC.

In 2000, Nike and other major clothing corporations renamed the Apparel Industry Partnership (AIP) the Fair Labor Association (FLA), in large part to compete with the WRC. The AIP, an initiative of the Clinton administration, had become a discredited organization, because all non-profit organizations and unions that had initially supported it, withdrew from it, with the exception of the International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF).

United Students Against Sweathops is widely viewed as the largest anti-sweatshop community group in the nation. It formed in 1997 as part of a broader anti-sweatshop movement increasingly popular in America. This movement exhibited a great degree of skepticism of free trade practices, including the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and, later, the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA).

Focusing on domestic as well as international sweatshops, the group has built coalitions of students, labor groups, workers, and community members that focus on a broad range of campaigns:

  • opposing Taco Bell's wages to farmlaborers ("Boot the Bell")
  • protesting Coca-Cola's policy towards union organizers in Colombia
  • sweatshop conditions at New Balance in New York and Forever 21 in San Francisco
  • living wage campaigns for campus workers and sweatshop workers
  • organizing anti-sweatshop groups in highschools.
  • supporting local labor campaigns
  • increased minimum wage campaigns in several states and localities

The group is based on the idea that students and community members should have control over the conditions under which their clothes are manufactured. Because universities license their logo to clothing manufacturers, who then subcontract labor, the group considers the most efficient way to control production the licensing stage. USAS also emphasizes working in solidarity with workers in sweatshops or on college campuses by supporting workers organizing themselves for better conditions.

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